Former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman offers unique political perspective in national media upon release of Stealing Our Democracy
Monday, August 10th, 2020 by Matthew ByrneDon Siegelman, who served as Alabama’s governor from 1999 to 2003, was wrongfully convicted in proceedings he calls politically motivated. He spent more than five years in prison, including, tragically, time in solitary confinement. Now released, Siegelman has become something quite dangerous in the political game: a motivated policy genius who doesn’t need to worry about popularity or elections. Siegelman is focused on pushing forward reform for our justice system, arguing that political corruption in our courts subverts the rights of defendants and that our prisoners are not receiving the care they desperately need, particularly during this pandemic. Siegelman’s important voice has been broadcast over the airwaves following the release of his new memoir, Stealing Our Democracy, including appearances on NPR stations and Sirius XM.
In an interview with On Point, a program produced by NPR affiliate WBUR, Siegelman had this to say about his experience in the justice system: “If you believe that in every situation one should find a purpose . . . I quickly found mine. My purpose now is to expose what’s going on [in the justice system] and try to change it.” If charges can falsely be brought against a sitting governor, what’s to stop the same from happening to anyone?
As governor of Alabama, Siegelman was arguably one of the most influential political leaders in the heart of both the Confederacy and civil rights movement. He shouldered the weight of Alabama’s history of racial injustice with grace, meeting with and celebrating figures like Rosa Parks, C. T. Vivian, and the late John Lewis. Talking with Joe Madison, “The Black Eagle,” on Sirius XM, Siegelman recalled walking with Lewis and then-president Bill Clinton across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis had been brutally beaten on Bloody Sunday. Siegelman called it the most impactful period of his governorship, remarking that “we all now have to share a greater burden in the struggle for truth, justice, and freedom now that John Lewis and C. T. Vivian have passed.” He agrees with President Obama that the fight continues and that the best way to ensure Lewis’s legacy is to strengthen the legislation he fought so hard for.
And Siegelman isn’t the only one who thinks his prosecution was a sham. A piece in The Washington Spectator analyzes the evidence showing that Karl Rove and other key political figures were covertly involved with prosecutors in his case. Spectator reporter Lou Dubose comments, “If I didn’t know the story . . . I might have considered the title of Siegelman’s new book—Stealing Our Democracy—broad and overstated. Which it is not.” The title of Siegelman’s memoir isn’t an overstatement; unscrupulous politicians, many of them right-wing, are threatening our core values of government through their unlawful use of the justice system. Siegelman’s book is a cautionary tale.
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chance to work again with the talented and irrepressible Helen Blackshear, former poet laureate of Alabama, in the year before she died. Her short study of Sidney Lanier interested us, in part because so little about the poet had been written.
were blind to the sins of slavery and segregation or, worse yet, who actively participated in these systems of oppression, we must ask ourselves how we can frame balanced judgment about such people. Sidney Lanier’s name will be removed from the high school that sought to honor him in its taking, as reported by 
Committee and other civil rights organizations, Curry was on the right side of history; better yet, she has recorded and preserved history, some of which she experienced first-hand. A summa cum laude graduate of Agnes Scott and a Fulbright scholar, at the young age of twenty-three Curry was selected to be an adult advisor in SNCC, a position of great import considering the organization’s impact on the movement. Through her reports on sit-ins to friendly media and other outlets, Curry can be credited with spurring on a positive outlook on peaceful resistance. She was also a white volunteer in Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. Beginning that year, Curry worked eleven years for the American Friends Service Committee, promoting school desegregation in Alabama and Mississippi. Connie would later become an author. In her Lillian Smith Award-winning work of nonfiction, Silver Rights, and in other works she has midwifed or co-written—Bob Zellner’s 
Ken Woodley is strong of character and driven by heart. These qualities emerge in high relief in 
All this talk about the office of the President, be it how Trump is or is not fit for it or who among his Democratic challengers represents our best chance for positive change, reminds us of the strength and character of Jack Brooks, perhaps the best-suited analyst of the Oval Office in our history. A Texas Democrat, Brooks served for nearly fifty years under ten presidents, some of them among our best (John F. Kennedy), our worst (Richard Nixon), and our most complex (Lyndon B. Johnson). With the recent release of the first biography on his life, titled 
and Museum. There, moderator Henrik Hertzberg (The New Yorker) spoke with co authors Tim and Brendan McNulty about Brooks’s legacy to a packed house. The program can be viewed thanks to 
represent the 7th District of Alabama with fervor and dedication. Turner was born a slave and rose to be Alabama’s first African American representative in Congress. 140 years after Turner took office, Terri Sewell was put in charge of the 7th district, the first African American woman to do so. After the recent publication of The Slave Who Went to Congress—an illustrated children’s book detailing Turner’s early life and political career—Congresswoman Sewell visited Clark Elementary in Selma with authors Frye Gaillard and Marti Rosner and gifted students there fifty copies of the book. Sewell movingly told the schoolchildren attending her program that she “stands on the shoulders of Benjamin Sterling Turner,” who paved the way for her civil service with his bold
choice to run for office. This incredible intersection of history reminds us of how important historymakers like Turner and Sewell are; the effects of their leadership can be felt in Dallas County today. The Slave Who Went to Congress—which the Midwest Book Review calls “a choice pick for personal, school, and library collections”—is a powerful account of an impactful life and, importantly, introduces Turner’s remarkable story of bravery and leadership to children around the world.
As school choice sparks national conversation–from the State of the Union address, where Trump derided ‘failing government schools’ and touted legislation that would divert up to five billion dollars in federal funding to private schools, to the Democratic debate stage in South Carolina–Steve Suitts’s incisive, timely analysis, 
including library patrons and friends, the mayor of the city of Sylacauga, Jim Heigl, and special guests Craigger Browne, Marcello Giorgi, and Frank Murphy. The event was organized by Ted Spears of the Sylacauga Marble Festival and Shirley Spears and Tracey Thomas of the library. The hundred-plus attendees enjoyed a wonderful reception, followed by a presentation by Cook based on her book, which represents years of research on the internationally famous Sylacauga marble quarry, the first history on the subject ever. Truly this was an event worthy of the story Ruth Beaumont Cook has to tell!
